Call centers are known in which incoming calls are routed to one of a plurality of agents. For example, the call center might provide help desk facilities for a particular group of products. Customers are able to call in and be allocated to an agent who has the necessary skills to deal with the customer's query. Each agent has one or more skills, for example, a particular agent has knowledge about sales for product X and about technical support for product Y. An incoming call is received and information from that call used by the call center, together with information about the agents, in order to route the incoming call to an agent with the appropriate skill. For example, an interactive voice response system (IVR system) may be used to find out what type of agent skill is required. Associated with each skill is a queue into which incoming calls are placed until an agent with that skill becomes available.
The terms “call center” and “contact center” as used herein are not intended to be restricted to situations in which telephone calls are made to the center. Other types of call or contact are also envisaged, such as email, fax, SMS, chat, web access, video access and any other suitable method of contact including conventional telephone calls and voice over internet protocol telephone calls. Similarly, the terms “call” and “contact” as used herein are not intended to be restricted to conventional telephone calls but include contacts made by email, fax, voice over IP and any other suitable medium.
Many types of contact center are arranged such that communications between contact center agents and customers or other end users are contingent upon, or dependent upon, successful operation of the contact center itself. For example, in many known contact centers a public branch exchange (PBX) is associated with the contact center. The contact center uses the PBX to transfer incoming calls to particular contact center agent queues that it selects. In this way calls between contact center agents and customers or end users are controlled by the contact center which is able to monitor status of the contact center agents to determine whether they are busy on calls, logged in or logged out etc. and to provide reports. However, if the contact center is not working for any reason, contacts cannot be directed between agents and end users.
Contact centers are also known which deal with other media types of call such as email, video, voice over internet protocol, and others. Again, for these types it is typical for the contact center itself to control communications between the contact center agents and the customers or end users. This is typically achieved in such a way that if the contact center is not working for any reason contacts cannot be directed between agents and end users.
Previously this problem has been addressed by using a fall back contact center which mirrors the main contact center itself. In the event that the main contact center is not working for any reason, the fall back contact center is able to take over and direct contacts. However, this is an expensive option because two contact centers need to be provided, ideally at different geographical locations, to reduce the likelihood of both centers being impacted at the same time. There is also the need to ensure that the fall back contact center is always up to date with the current status of the main contact center. Achieving that mirroring of data is a complex problem that also takes up network capacity that could otherwise be used for other traffic.
Another approach has been to use a conventional automatic call distribution (ACD) system as a fall back. A conventional ACD system is typically less expensive than providing a complete mirrored contact center. This approach is suitable for call centers using an associated PBX and it allows contacts to be automatically directed to contact center agents in the event that the contact center itself is not operating. However, conventional ACD systems are not suitable for handling all media types such as voice over internet protocol contacts, email contacts, video contacts and others. In that case fallback ACD systems cannot be used.
Another option is to simply forward all incoming contacts to a recorded announcement system asking the customers to call back later, or to a music on hold system or similar. However, this is not satisfactory for customers and leads to loss of business for the contact center.